The Royal Decree of 1 June 1900 ordered the "complete and orderly cataloguing of the historical or artistic wealth of the nation" and was the origin of the so-called Monumental and Artistic Catalogue of Spain.
The Monumental and Artistic Catalogue of Spain
This catalogue aimed, for the first time, to provide an inventory and describe the historical, artistic and archaeological heritage of each of the Spanish provinces with a view to its subsequent publication (Rodrigo Montero, 2012).
As stated in Article 2 of this Royal Decree, "For the greater order and practical result of this work, it will be carried out by province, not moving on to others without the Historical and Artistic Catalogue of the province in which the research has begun being completely finished". Article 3, for its part, clarified, "The Catalogue of each province will form a volume or notebook, which will include all the monumental and artistic wealth existing in those provinces" (Ministerio de Instrucción y Bellas Artes, 1900).
Regarding the development of the work, a criterion was established for an exhaustive collection of information, which also included photographic images of objects, places, sites and monuments, thereby complementing the detailed descriptions with graphic evidence.
In this way, it was hoped to create a tool that would foster knowledge of the historical and artistic heritage and improve protection and conservation efforts.
The initiative was thanks to Juan Facundo Riaño, a man of profound culture, who chose the young Manuel Gómez-Moreno for this work. Manuel Gómez-Moreno, the work with the province of Avila, and later wrote the volumes for Leon, Zamora, and Salamanca (Muñoz Cosme, 2012). It may come as a surprise that this first volume was written between 1900 and 1901 and published for the first time in 1983.
Manuel Gómez-Moreno, together with his wife, Elena Rodríguez-Bolívar, worked on the two volumes of the catalogue corresponding to the province of Zamora, specifically, between October 1903 and April 1905, which was published in 1927.
The production of the Zamora Catalogue is amply documented, as its author states that he produced it in two consecutive campaigns, accompanied by his wife, and completed it in 1905 at his home in Granada. It was his wife who transcribed the texts and became the copyist of the manuscripts, which were delivered in December 1906 (Hidalgo Brinquis, 2012).
During the opening of the reliquaries in Zamora Cathedral in 1904, a surprising discovery was made: several painted, carved and chiselled ivory and enamel chests of various sizes, one of which was the so-called Pyxis of Zamora”, a masterpiece of Hispano-Muslim art.
The Gómez Moreno couple illustrated this find with two photographs of the Pyxis of Zamora on a plate in volume 2 of the Zamora volume of the Monumental Catalogue (Villaseñor Sebastián, 2012).
The ambitious project of the Monumental and Artistic Catalogue of Spain remained unfinished; of the 47 volumes begun, only 39 were completed, between 1900 and 1961, and only 17 of them were published (Muñoz Cosme, 2012). Despite this, the work contains a large amount of documentation, photographs of many properties and objects that were later altered or disappeared, and the authors' interpretation of them is a source of great value for researchers and professionals related to cultural heritage and the history of the social and artistic sciences in our country (Muñoz Cosme, 2012).
Bibliography
― Hidalgo Brinquis, M.C. (2012). Interpretación material de los Catálogos monumentales de España. En: M. Domingo y O. Cedón (Eds.). El Catálogo Monumental de España (1900-1961). Investigación, restauración y difusión (pp. 77-107). Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte; Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC).
― Ministerio de Instrucción Pública y Bellas Artes (1900). Real Decreto de 1 de junio de 1900 sobre la formación del Catálogo monumental y artístico de la Nación. Gaceta de Madrid (2-06-1900). Consulta: 25 de marzo de 2025. Disponible en: https://www.boe.es/gazeta/dias/1900/06/02/pdfs/GMD-1900-153.pdf
― Muñoz Cosme, A. (2012). Catálogos e inventarios del patrimonio en España. En: M. Domingo y O. Cedón (Eds.). El Catálogo Monumental de España (1900-1961). Investigación, restauración y difusión (pp. 15-37). Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte; Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC).
― Rodrigo Montero, R. (2012). Introducción. En: M. Domingo y O. Cedón (Eds.). El Catálogo Monumental de España (1900-1961). Investigación, restauración y difusión (pp. 9). Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte; Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC).
― Villaseñor Sebastián, F. (2012). La importancia del Catálogo Monumental para la investigación del arte medieval en España. En: M. Domingo y O. Cedón (Eds.). El Catálogo Monumental de España (1900-1961). Investigación, restauración y difusión (pp. 225-249). Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte; Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC).